


You're Maddening

by realjane



Series: Relentless (Hogwarts Era series) [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Hogwarts Era, Idiots in Love, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28413648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realjane/pseuds/realjane
Summary: Hermione finds Draco in the library, injured and sleep-deprived. She sends him back to sleep with a challenge to meet.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Series: Relentless (Hogwarts Era series) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081031
Comments: 11
Kudos: 81





	You're Maddening

**Author's Note:**

> Part 4 of my Hogwarts-era series, 'Relentless'. I'm not sure I'll ever feel confident in writing a Hogwarts-era long-form fic, but I'm really enjoying exploring their dynamic! Enjoy. :)

She found him in the back of the library, slumped over the arm of the overstuffed chair, to which every exhausted student eventually succumbed if they sat in it during the run up to OWLS. But the blond wasn’t asleep. His eyes were wide open and unseeing. One hand desperately clutched his hair, and the other was wound so tightly around his wand that it was bowing at the center. Every time the lightning flashed through the window, he jumped. When the thunder rolled through the stones, he pressed his eyes shut and braced for impact that never came.

He was bleeding. From his palm, which he kept tightly wrapped around his wand, but rivulets of red were collecting at his white shirt cuff. 

He lay his head back and shut his eyes. A long and ragged breath fell from his lips in resignation to whatever he was going through. The Slytherin seemed to go entirely still.

Her feet pushed her forward. His anxiety spiked into a dangerous fervor the closer she drew to him. She moved silently. At the end of the aisle leading to the chair and the injured snake it cradled, she pocketed her wand in her outer robe and shucked it off. She pushed her sleeves up. Then… she knelt.

Her hand hovered over his. Just for a moment. Prying his fingers away from the hawthorn was a trial of wills between his death grip and her gentle request at first, but his eyes snapped open. He puffed a throaty resignation to her touch, and let the wand fall. She picked it up carefully. His outer robe was crumpled beneath him, but there was enough fabric available to wipe off the bloody handprint. He opened his mouth to speak but she held up a finger and hopped to her feet, dashing to retrieve her wand. When she returned to his side, he had slumped forward, so his elbows were braced on his knees. She took his injured hand in hers. He let her.

_ “Episkey.” _ The wound closed. She used the soft cloth from his robe to clean his hand; scourgifying it would’ve been too stringent, too aggressive for the little cut. His hand closed around hers sharply and squeezed. His forehead found her shoulder.

He didn’t do anything. Just breathed into her shirt. Clutched her hand. 

“What happened?” Her voice filled the quiet library. 

He shook his head, so it waggled ever so slightly on her shoulder. “Don’t know. Woke up like that.”

“Why’d you come  _ here?” _

He didn’t answer. Hermione sat back on her heels but he looked down. His hair was mussed at the back like it had been pressed up against the chair for a prolonged period of time. She sighed. His hand went limp in hers.

“You slept here.”

“So what.”

“Draco--”

“What does it matter?” He pressed two fingers to his temple and rubbed. “Sleep just as poorly here as the dungeons. Why are  _ you _ here?”

“Doing my rounds.”

“Suppose you’ll give me detention, then and--”

“I don’t have that kind of power, and even if I did--”

“--turn me into McGonagall--”

“I wouldn’t  _ punish you _ for trying to get some sleep!”

“Maybe you should.” He looked up, then. He glared at her through a storm of poorly-concealed pain, which should have cowed her. She cupped his cheeks. She looked like she wanted to shake him.

“Stop it,” she murmured. “Let me walk you back.”

The boy between her fingers frowned, and she was bracketed between his knees in a tentative embrace. His hands ghosted around her sides, then up her back. She shivered. He curled his fingers into her shirt and held fast. 

“Get away from me,” he whispered. “Go back to your rounds, crawl back into the lion’s den, and be done with me.”

Hermione brushed her thumbs across his cheekbones. “Is that what you want?”

Her lips became the fixture of his gaze. It was almost imperceptible, but he shook his head just once. “When you said you were relentless…” he trailed off.

“You thought I was being, what... facetious?” Her mouth quirked up at the corner. 

“An idiot.”

“Takes one to know one.” She kissed him, in the way that made his brain go fuzzy--where suddenly his lips belonged to her, as did the groan she coaxed from the back of his throat, and he would’ve willingly given over every part of himself to her, if only she didn’t stop… but she always did. And when he returned to himself, Draco stood abruptly, lifting the small witch with him by the waist. He had a mind to thank her. The words would probably come out gibberish if he tried, and besides,  _ what exactly would he be thankful for? _

_ Thank you, Granger, for severing the last threads of control I was holding onto. It was really stellar of you to clean up my bloody hand, and everything--not every day you get to call a girl an idiot, gee, thanks ever so much!  _

She rubbed the nape of his neck. “You should get some rest,” she murmured. “In your  _ bed, _ you numpty.”

He just squeezed her tighter. His face was hidden in her neck, sheltered by her curtain of hair.

_ Thank you for… telling me to go back to bed. For caring if I sleep or not. For caring that I’m bleeding. _

_ For caring. _

No, that wouldn’t do. “You should at least dock me house points,” he mumbled into her skin. 

She scoffed. “No.”

“You’re maddening.”

“If you want Slytherin to lose the house cup, you better do it by other means than self-sabotage. Like losing the match against Gryffindor on Sunday.”

“...I’m not playing.”

“Whyever not?”

“It’s a stupid quidditch game!”

Hermione tugged on his hair until he met her eyes. “Someday you’ll be longing to play in a stupid school match for imaginary points, Seeker Malfoy. Besides… if you play, I’ll go to the match.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You hate sports.”

“It would be a tremendous sacrifice on my part,” she said dramatically, sighing to punctuate the sentiment. “Would you feel better about it if I was there?”

He didn’t dignify that particular assertion with an answer. Truth was, he’d feel  _ worse, _ knowing she was only there to be his emotional buoy, when she would much rather be buried in the very chair she found him in, with a book on ancient runes. And the reality of it was, nobody knew that he only stayed at the school for bloody Granger. It’s not like she could sit in the stands wearing one of his jerseys, waving a  _ Malfoy is our Savior _ flag. Right? Couldn’t she? No… definitely not. Especially if he didn’t  _ ask her to, _ because you can’t give Hermione Granger an inch, she’ll take the mile. She’ll start thinking she’s needed. By him.

He shook his head. “Just be wasting your time to watch me lose.”

“I know this comes as a surprise to you, but I don’t participate in your life for the enjoyment of tabulating your wins and losses. I rather prefer the moments  _ between, _ when it comes to you.” She patted his shoulder so he might set her on her feet again, but Draco refused to release her fully. He glared at her.

“What does that even mean?”

Hermione’s hands slid down the front of his shirt and straightened his tie. She righted his collar, and stuffed the hem of his shirt back into the top of his trousers, which forced him to catch her wrist and give her a look of warning. But she just smiled.

“I like you,” she shrugged.

“For Merlin’s sake,  _ why?” _

Hermione just rolled her eyes and pulled him along, back through the stacks. He barely had time to grab his outer robe and wand from the chair before she yanked him towards the hallway. Somehow, in the span of time it took her to traverse the length of the castle and deposit him before the entrance to the Slytherin dormitory, they hadn’t encountered a single other person. Not a student, not a professor, not a grumpy cat and her master, not even a ghost. They were each other’s only company. Every time they passed a lantern, the light would bathe her in gold. Sometimes she glanced at him. Once she linked their fingers together. She didn’t speak, and she certainly didn’t linger on his desperate demand for an answer, even though it hung over his head.

Draco realized he was clinging to her when she wiggled her fingers--he was squeezing her hand so hard that they were losing circulation. Nobody touched him like her, and even then, the most she ever did was kiss him. He wanted to go to her whenever he saw her in the halls, to sit beside her in their shared classes and clasp hands beneath the table secretly, and more than anything, he wanted to own her touch as something only  _ he _ got to experience. He wanted to do so proudly, and damn what anyone thought. It would take courage, and a fair amount of lunacy, but… maybe he could work up to it. Maybe in the light of morning it would feel easier to attempt such a public acknowledgment of his… preference for her. That’s what it was--a pure and simple preference. Hermione Granger, or  _ nobody.  _

It was a bad idea. But it was the best bad idea he’d ever had, and it would certainly catch her off guard… and wasn’t that worth the whole banana? 

Draco stopped walking so abruptly that Hermione staggered back. She looked up at him with a raised brow--gods, she was so  _ short-- _ and he tried to think of an explanation, but there really wasn’t one to offer. He had just admitted to himself, in the lowest of terminology (which could only be credited to sitting behind Seamus Finnegan all quarter), that she was the most important thing to him in his life. That wasn’t the sort of thing one admitted out loud, especially because it would put her in a position to be aghast, so he just shrugged. She patted his hand. 

“I’ll see you at breakfast,” she said softly, as they came to a stop outside the dungeons. She released him, but remained mere centimeters from him. Draco straightened, put his hands in his pockets (so he wouldn’t reach for her again), and shook his head.

“I won’t?” She smiled at him innocently.

“Tell me something.”

“What?”

“What do you get… out of this?” He gestured between them loosely.

“Out of what?” She caught his hand this time. “Out of badgering you to take better care of yourself? Out of dragging you back to your dorm so you get some rest? Or… are you asking me what I get out of kissing you, and holding your hand, and--”

He bent down and caught her lips. “That,” he murmured.

“You tell me.” She kissed him, and then leapt backwards, out of reach… giggling all the while. “Goodnight, Malfoy.”

He said nothing, but she obviously didn’t expect him to. She slung her robes over her shoulder. She smiled in that way that made him feel equal parts stupid and angry, and then she flounced back up the hall to the staircase.

“Granger!” His voice reverberated on every stone, and he deeply regretted it the moment she turned back to him from the bottom step. He flipped his hair off his forehead. She always liked that. He didn’t say anything else. She raised a hand. He mimicked the gesture. Her head fell back like she was laughing, and then she continued up the stairs until her black mary-janes disappeared from sight. He looked down at his hand, which still bore the slight red tinge from blood, but no evidence it had ever been cut or injured, because she had fixed it.

He would be lucky to sleep, now. It would take a good thump to the skull to make him pass out, instead of what he intended to do until dawn broke:

Lay on his pillow, and consider what in the world  _ Hermione Granger  _ got out of… this. Except that if he did that, he’d probably miss breakfast, and he fully intended to see her there. Maybe even speak to her, where other people could see. Salazar forbid it--but he might even  _ sit with her. _

_ What was she doing to him? _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to join me on Tumblr at TheSuperJane to chat :)


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